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Has anyone tried this?

03-03-2010, 10:08 PM

Just as a new/old food joint does have you ever just focused and I mean focused on just one spot like not even 4-5 mile radius. I was talkn with a friend, who does handy man services, and business seems to be good with him.

Anyways his thoughts were with the flyers most people just toss it in the trash when they see it. But when you see the name over and over who you going to call the guy who left a business card/flyer once or the one that you see all the time from constant advertising. To him, thinking on the customers behalf is it shows that your not a flake, your going to be there next week and the week after. Eventually it drives competion out of the area was his idea atleast.

He says he canvasses the same area about once a month... alot a flyers but also alot of localized business. Has anyone tried this? I think Im going to give it a shot and see how it works. Cause it worked on me once. Kept tossing the food joint flyer then finally tried it out eat there all the time now. Same thing, saw it like every month.

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I have tried flyers on doors but only once late in the season I think the key for us is to do that about a month or two before the season in your area starts and keep doing that in a are you target like you said a couple mile radius of home It would be nice if I could get all the houses or even a few in a local area think of all the gass you would save. I was against flyers until now

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I think that is a great idea. I suppose there could be the occasional customer who says that you are "spamming" them but for each one of them there would likely be many that would prefer to give business to a local neighborhood person.

This is purely my opinion coming from the outside. If I thought I would have the time for all the business I would consider doing fliers in my area for my shop. I may just end up doing that, who knows.

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Ya he says he breaks it down to a sq mile and just jumps from 1 to the other then starts over when hes done. He did it with his landscape side now hes doing it on his handy man side and desided to sell his landscape side to focus on that(much more money obviously).

Not sure the truth of it but he said his brother made 100K in the first year but who knows......

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Just as a new/old food joint does have you ever just focused and I mean focused on just one spot like not even 4-5 mile radius. I was talkn with a friend, who does handy man services, and business seems to be good with him.

Tell me this, what do you feel the difference is between a lawn care business and a restaurant when it comes to marketing to a certain geographic area? Or is there a difference?

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Lol its funny you asked that question cause the whole time he is telling me this story Im wondering the same thing. I think ive come to the conclusion that there isnt. Even when a little kid starts on his own street as I did once apon a time you go door to door or even word of mouth. I think I had maybe 7-8 people that new me and had me do work for them. Obviously at the time I didnt expand but same concept that whole street was mine none of my freinds could mow a lawn there if their life depended on it. lol

When you have exausted an area you expand, I think would be the best way.
And your not going to get everyone. But in the process of staying in that small radius people will see you all the time. I have 1 truck and trailer if you see me all the time in that one area its says maybe you have more than just the one truck making you look bigger and also that you do a lot of work in that area so their neighbors must think you do great work.

I think Im going to give it a shot.... sides with the potencial to save fuel and time cost figure the upside alone is worth it. Ill have to let everyone know how it goes... will take time though...

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Ya but if u saturate the area given, you are right needs to be an area with high probability that they will do the service or it is wasted but they see you over and over. But you drive out competion by being seen alot. I used to work for carpet cleaning business and we would get a lot of business from the neighbors seeing us do a house 2-3x a year. Granted you want to be seen by as many people as pssible so they know your in business, naturaly you want to paper as many homes as possible. But wouldnt you want to keep a route as close as possible and when your ready to expand since you are mobile you can unlike the restauants.

I dont know like I said Im just gunna try it and see if it works ef not it was all for not. I dont have enough business to keep me that busy yet anyways so its not like ill be spend that much to try it out. Trail and error.

In other news made a google maps account and got my first call from it the other day. I would highly sugest getting one if you dont. Has anyone tried google adwords and how did it work out for you?

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When they google yard care for my area I pop up as one of the companies in my area. Its free and update again had a call saturday for service bi weekly account now and doing her neighbors next week. All from a free service.

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This is my first post here, but I've been reading a lot of the other posts.

Real marketing studies show that you have to get your offer seen by a prospective customer any where from 9 to 12 times before they will respond. And that doesn't include all the times they completely missed your offer.

I'm amazed at the number of biz owners here who say they tried flyers ONCE and it doesn't work.

Or they tried postcards ONCE and it doesn't work.

There is no question that any of the methods talked about here work. The question is how are you using the methods?

Maybe your flyers don't even tell your prospect what you want them to do. Maybe they don't address the benefits from your customer's point of view.
Who knows.

But if you only try it once, I guarantee your prospect won't remember you when they are ready.

As for whether or not you can afford it - compare these two scenarios:

1. You do a mass canvass of 5000 flyers(or postcards, or whatever) all at one time. You MIGHT reach 5000 prospects (but not likely) only a very few are ready to do business with you. Almost none will remember you in a week.

2. You distribute 500 flyers to a concentrated area once a week for 10 weeks. Each of the 10 flyers is slightly different but they all have your name and number. Your fewer prospects see your marketing stuff 10 times and remember you and call you as you build credibility. Your response rate is gonna way out-perform the first scenario. And your cost is almost identical.

Not to mention how much more efficient you will be if you are cutting all your yards in a 5 mile radius on the same day (instead of spending 20 minutes driving from one stop to the next.)

I say give it a real effort and tweak what doesn't work until it does work.

But that's just my two cents.

Good Luck

Last edited by LittleDave; 03-07-2010, 07:45 PM.
Reason: To clarify a point.

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To save some "leg work" you could try including zip codes into your website description/blog.
As mobile search is gaining huge traction in the local SEO markets, due to the nature of texting (less is more), postal codes are becoming the hot search terms when someone is stuck in traffic and remembers that their trees need trimming. They jump on their Iphones and text (type) "tree service 34522".
This takes 5-10 minutes of website editing, plus the added advantage of getting buyers.
Old saying, but still true "flyers ain't buyers". Your return on a flyer is what, .001%?
Better that people look for you, than you look for them.